Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Roguey]

Considering the bulk of T:ToN's owners are likely from the 75-100k backers it had, that means Age of Decadence technically outsold it.

Sight-unseen pre-orders are still sales.

Additionally, going by the numbers rather than the percentage, more buyers enjoyed Tides of Numenera than Age of Decadence.

 

[Rev]

The game's extremely low completion rate and declining review average on Steam support a lot of the criticisms from Codex users.

The decline in the review average has started when Paradox tried to scam their consumers and raise the price of their games just before a Steam sale, they were caught immediately and pretty much all their games were heavily downvoted for it (PoE shifted from about 89% positive based on thousands of reviews to 83-84%, which is where it's still at).
The completion rate is pretty low but it's basically mostly the same with all 50+ hours RPGs: D:OS's achievement for ending the game has actually been reached by fewer of its customers (6,5% against 10,3 of PoE). They're both also huge hits, which means they were bought by a lot of "casuals" unlike a game like, say, Age of Decadence (who's also much shorter btw) that only a niche of more hardcore players know and play, which makes it far more likely for its players to actually finish it.

Aside from this, I don't agree with people saying there isn't a market for a Torment-like game: it wouldn't sell like D:OS 1/2 or PoE, but I think it could be profitable if done by devs with a better reputation and a better team of designers/writers. I would argue that a nu-Torment made by Obsidian or Avellone with a new team would've already sold at least 400k or 500k copies by now.

 

[Efe]

i doubt any game could be successful in a setting as shitty as this.
also nobody has time for "meh" games anymore. if it isnt known or it doesnt come recommended by a friend or a person they follow (be it codex curator or total biscuit) it just gets ignored.

 

[Roguey]

To quote Josh Sawyer, a setting is just a place where things happen.

 

[Fairfax]

It shouldn't be, but it is. Not for all types of games obviously (nobody here has problems hating on Fallout 4)

But I mean, it's obvious that if for example D:OS 2 had undersold the first game, a bunch of people here would be dancing on Larian's misfortune and the game's dreaded armor system would have become a memetic totem blamed for its commercial disappointment. Because the game massively succeeded, it's gotten more of a muted "Oh, phooey"-type reaction instead.

It's one thing to dance on their misfortune, it's another thing to conclude a game's commercial failure is due to a lack of Codex-friendly design and features. Also, a D:OS2 that failed would have to be a very different game, so you're making a lot of assumptions there.

The game's extremely low completion rate and declining review average on Steam support a lot of the criticisms from Codex users.

The decline in the review average has started when Paradox tried to scam their consumers and raise the price of their games just before a Steam sale, they were caught immediately and pretty much all their games were heavily downvoted for it (PoE shifted from about 89% positive based on thousands of reviews to 83-84%, which is where it's still at).

The average was 95% at launch and has been going down ever since. It was already in the 85% range before the regional pricing fiasco, and the current recent average is 78%.

The completion rate is pretty low but it's basically mostly the same with all 50+ hours RPGs:

Not really: TW3 (26.5%), Skyrim (32%), DA:O (36%), Fallout 4 (25.2%), and many others suggest otherwise.

There's not much of a market for this niche regardless of how high quality the title is.

There's no recent release nearly as good as the Codex favourites that belong in this niche.

To quote Josh Sawyer, a setting is just a place where things happen.

Says a lot more about him than settings.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

To quote Josh Sawyer, a setting is just a place where things happen.

The happenings got to be good too.

 

[Efe]

To quote Josh Sawyer, a setting is just a place where things happen.

but in numenera everything happens.
when everything can be bizarre in every different way, nothing is actually bizarre but just confusing all the time and you also lose the baseline 'common sense' of the world.
why don't you ask sawyer what he thinks of numenera setting? i doubt he had that in mind when he said that

 

[Roguey]

There's no recent release nearly as good as the Codex favourites that belong in this niche.

I mentioned AoD right in that very post. Likewise, I'm absolutely confident No Truce with The Furies isn't going to sell anywhere near Tides of Numenera numbers no matter how hard Prime Junta hypes it. Additionally, just look at Torment: Beamdog Edition's Steam numbers http://steamspy.com/app/466300
Owners: 43,859 ± 6,306

Yeah, it's a rerelease, but contrast it with the other Beamdoggles http://steamspy.com/app/228280 http://steamspy.com/app/257350 http://steamspy.com/app/321800

Even Icewind Dale's sold more, and not by a little, but a lot.

The average was 95% at launch and has been going down ever since. It was already in the 85% range before the regional pricing fiasco, and the current recent average is 78%.

This is a natural consequence of people who were never that enthused about it giving it a go because it's deeply discounted.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The completion rate is pretty low but it's basically mostly the same with all 50+ hours RPGs:

Not really: TW3 (26.5%), Skyrim (32%), DA:O (36%), Fallout 4 (25.2%), and many others suggest otherwise..

He said RPGs mate.

 

[555]

68% positive Steam score means that there are perhaps a bit over 70,000 people who enjoyed it.

That doesn't really make sense, not everyone who played a game leaves a review for the game or upvotes/downvotes them. Looking at reviews, it has about 2k of them and the most upvoted one I could find(which is not recommend) has 1,3 k upvoting it. That's far away from 70k

 

[Ismaul]

Something I said on Shoutbox recently:

Oct 17, 2017 at 7:10 PM - @Infinitron: Here's the thing about games like Tyranny and Torment IMO - they're not great, but many people in the Codex community kinda allow themselves to be even more negative about them because they also failed or disappointed commercially

Conversely, Codex criticism of PoE and even moreso D:OS 2 has been blunted by those games' commercial success.

It wouldn't be because DOS2 is just plain fun flaws and all, and delivered on what it promised, while Numenera failed at what it was supposed to be good at? DOS2 was meant to have a great and fun combat system, and expectations were more than met, even the dialogue is much improved, the tag system's great. Numenera was supposed to have philosophically challenging dialogue and encounters, what it has instead is filler pseudo-serious purple prose; the result is basically the opposite of what was expected.

Even with Numenera having a small core audience, it couldn't even grab those players. It lost its backers. It lost those who loved the original Torment. And therefore it lost word of mouth, on which the original thrived and built its reputation as the best written game, even amongst those who have never played it. It's even on this basis that Avellone earned his long-standing reputation as one of the best writers. Numenera failed at its core, and therefore couldn't reach a bigger audience. For this type of game, much like art/serious movies, word of mouth and critical reception is paramount for it to reach a larger public.

For example, all my gaming friends bought DOS2 because I suggested it (and DOS before it), and they loved it. No one bought Numenera, even if I had talked their ear off during the Kickstarter, because I didn't mention it positively anymore. Niche has nothing to do with it, many bought and loved AoD. Word of mouth can make or kill a non-AAA-marketed RPG, especially when an effort is required to get into it (system learning / dialogue reading).

This idea that the Codex reception of games is mirroring commercial success is plain bullshit. We were critical of Numenera way before it was released because of what we knew about it, and the inXile drama, while we were positive about DOS2 for what we knew about it, and Sven being a bro. All this was confirmed when we got the games in our hands. And then word of mouth did the rest.

Truth is, inXile killed our chance at a new good Torment. Others will point at Numenera and judge the design and writing challenge to not be worth it. inXile not only failed an audience and failed at making a good game, they did lasting damage to a type of game rarely attempted. They deserve the criticism, and then some.

 

[Nano]

I would say there are still a good portion of potential players who have been turned off by its lacklustre reception.

It's free. All it costs is a few hours of time to get a first-hand impression of whether or not it's worth more of it, but of all the Steam players online today, only hundreds could be bothered to even do that.

Have you not noticed how packed full of well-received games this year has been? Ain't nobody got the time or energy to try out a game that had a middling reception, even if it's free.

 

[Rev]

The average was 95% at launch and has been going down ever since. It was already in the 85% range before the regional pricing fiasco, and the current recent average is 78%.

Well, I don't know when it was 95%, but it stabilized at around 88-89% and stayed there for about two years. It dropped following Paradox's douchery and have not yet recovered.

Not really: TW3 (26.5%), Skyrim (32%), DA:O (36%), Fallout 4 (25.2%), and many others suggest otherwise.

I think it's a bit unfair to confront PoE with AAA RPGs, made to appeal to casuals and that don't present many challenges (not that PoE is hard for a seasoned player, but it is for a casual), so I'm not that surprised that the completion rate is higher, even if these games are just as long as PoE, or even longer.
I think it's much more useful to draw lines between PoE and other "similar" RPGs, like WL2, Tyranny, T:ToN, D:OS 1/2, Shadowruns, etc.

 

[Cross]

To quote Josh Sawyer, a setting is just a place where things happen.

Sawyer is the last person who would downplay the importance of a setting. I remember one interview where he was asked about the inspiration for PoE's 'original' elements, like the three new races, and he went on to explain that they were specifically designed to be recognizable equivalents of D&D races so that players wouldn't be alienated by the setting (the aumaua as half-orcs, the orlans as gnomes/halflings and the godlike as genasi).

 

[gruntar]

24-hour peak of...
Tyranny: 550
Pillars of Eternity: 1021

inXile is a walking corpse.

I wouldn't say it's anything against inXile specifically, just that they hit the ceiling of people interested in playing a successor to Planescape Torment a long time ago. Pretty brutal to find out that even decades later and with an expanded player base, the interest in such a title hasn't expanded at all.

Wasteland 2 - 83

Does it mean that nobody wants to play classic post-apoc cRPGs anymore ?

Fallout - 909
Fallout 2 - 213

 

[Ismaul]

Sawyer is the last person who would downplay the importance of a setting.

Nahhhh man get with the program. JES just wants to make a historical setting RPG, just 'cause. It's a coat of paint rarely used and he likes that historical color, that's all there is to it. Shit happens in any setting anyway. Also if Roguey said it JES must believe it; QED man.

 

[Prime Junta]

The fuck am I reading ITT?

T:ToN's basic design parameters were fine. Problem is, they fucked up the execution. Lots of shit that was promised was cut, the environments look like ass, the soundscape is canned, the writing varies wildly in quality but most of it is bad, the combat is like nails on a chalkboard, and they didn't manage to come up with a Numenera-esque cRPG system where cyphers count for something and it's actually possible to fail from time to time despite the possibility to expend Effort.

The end result serves no-one. The backers didn't get their stretch goals. The PS:T fanboys didn't get their deep, personal, moving, powerful story. The Numenera fans didn't get their fun-to-play-yet-true-to-the-spirit adaptation of the rules. Art-and-sound fanboys didn't get pretty art and impressive sound. And trad-cRPG fans didn't get a game that's enjoyable to interact with and fun to play, presents interesting and varied challenges, and gives a sense of progression.

It is a bad game. You can make up any number of rationalisations on top of that, but whatever you do you won't turn that sow's ear into a silk purse, nor can you draw any conclusions from its failure beyond the fact that the market does have some, albeit minimal, expectations of quality.

 

[Infinitron]

This idea that the Codex reception of games is mirroring commercial success is plain bullshit.

Not mirroring, but affected. If a game fails commercially, that makes its critics louder and more self-righteous ("Oh wow, this game must REALLY suck, not even the normies bought it! I'm even more right than I thought!"). Which makes them more likely to overstate their case. But if it succeeds, that can make them doubt themselves and tone their criticisms down.

 

[Prime Junta]

I wasn't aware Codexians need help to become more self-righteous.

 

[Ismaul]

This idea that the Codex reception of games is mirroring commercial success is plain bullshit.

Not mirroring, but affected. If a game fails commercially, that makes its critics louder and more self-righteous ("Oh wow, this game must REALLY suck, not even the normies bought it! I'm even more right than I thought!"). Which makes them more likely to overstate their case. But if it succeeds, that can make them doubt themselves and tone their criticisms down.

That shouldn't change anything, because if you're right and we're affected by commercial success, then there's also the opposite effect of liking things even if something fails commercially that you're forgetting. Arcanum, liking Alpha Protocol this much, Troika's other games, etc. So those tendencies should cancel out, or rather, the Codex should lean a bit against the market because we're contrarians and we know better. What's left then? Well, actual legitimate criticism, overstated or not.

In the case of Numenera, I don't think it's overstated at all. This is not RPG #25131 that pops on the market and happens to be underwhelming, and that we could just ignore. This is one that took the Torment name -- you know the RPG that has a permanent spot in our top3 games -- and which we fueled with our hopes and our money. If anything, the "overstatement" of the criticism comes from there, not the fucking market. Like we somehow need a game to be financially unsuccessful to actually criticize it vehemently. Were do you think this is man, RPG Watch? Here we shit hard on all them AAA games (except The Witcher 3), we have reviews trashing all Bethesda's games with reason and legitimate self-righteousness (see VD's reviews), and those games were wildly successful. The fuck you're on about.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The fuck you're on about.

Infinitron's armchair psychology.

Or how to deal with people who don't like what you like.

See how the codex didn't like W2 because we don't like post-apocalyptic landscapes and PoE because we don't like villages or something.

 

[Infinitron]

Not for all types of games obviously (nobody here has problems hating on Fallout 4)

 

[Ismaul]

So you're saying that

it's obvious that if for example D:OS 2 had undersold the first game, a bunch of people here would be dancing on Larian's misfortune

Yet the Codex isn't always influenced by the commercial success of a game in its criticism/reception.

Not for all types of games obviously

Therefore, obviously, you should have a clear criteria for distinguishing which game's criticism is influenced by the game's commercial fate?

Otherwise you're just calling it arbitrarily to make the facts fit your view.


P.S. If DOS2 was financially unsuccessful, I wouldn't be dancing at all, because Larian is one of the rare studios that shows a lot of promise and is working to improve and deliver with every game. Plus Sven is a bro. Just like we don't dance when Obsidian underdelivers as usual, we get butthurt, do 7 playthroughs and 7 reviews and argue about it in every thread.

 

[Infinitron]

Therefore, obviously, you should have a clear criteria for distinguishing which game's criticism is influenced by the game's commercial fate?

Yes, the criteria is games that are broadly aimed at an oldschool audience. Games that are relevant to the Codex's interests.

I don't understand what's so controversial about what I'm saying. It's not "You only hate this game because it failed commercially." It's "You give this gave even more grief than you would have otherwise because it failed commercially." Surely you're not denying that the Codex community is known for being vindictive and drama-seeking?

 

[Roguey]

68% positive Steam score means that there are perhaps a bit over 70,000 people who enjoyed it.

That doesn't really make sense, not everyone who played a game leaves a review for the game or upvotes/downvotes them. Looking at reviews, it has about 2k of them and the most upvoted one I could find(which is not recommend) has 1,3 k upvoting it. That's far away from 70k

Statistic samples. Given that there's barely a difference at all between bought-on-Steam reviews and the free keys that don't count by default, it's fair to say that 68% positive is an accurate overall value.

It lost its backers. It lost those who loved the original Torment.

The above sentence is relevant to this. 2/3rds of people who backed it and 2/3rds who people who bought it directly on Steam liked it. It merely lost a 1/3rd of those players. A 2/3rds majority is pretty good, it's not as great as a 3/4ths, 4/5ths, or 9/10ths majority.

Wasteland 2 - 83

Does it mean that nobody wants to play classic post-apoc cRPGs anymore ?

Wrong Wasteland 2. You want to look at the director's cut which peaked at 335 yesterday http://steamcharts.com/app/404730

With a total of over 400, that's more than Tides of Numenera. Wasteland and pseudo-iso post-apocalyptic RPGs are fine.

To quote Josh Sawyer, a setting is just a place where things happen.

Sawyer is the last person who would downplay the importance of a setting. I remember one interview where he was asked about the inspiration for PoE's 'original' elements, like the three new races, and he went on to explain that they were specifically designed to be recognizable equivalents of D&D races so that players wouldn't be alienated by the setting (the aumaua as half-orcs, the orlans as gnomes/halflings and the godlike as genasi).

The full quote:

The flaws in fantasy settings usually have to do with their fundamental premises. If the premise is that it's a traditional fantasy setting TURNED ON ITS HEAD / WITH EDGE!! then you've just booked a one-way ticked to Dullsville.

That said, a lot of the perception of a setting is reliant on how it is presented. A single setting interpreted and presented in three different ways can be received very differently even by the same audience.

Finally, I'd say that the setting is just that: a place where things happen. A compelling story within that setting is necessary for the player to retain long term interest in what's happening outside of the moment to moment game play.

It was important to be trad for a BG/IWD successor, just as it was important to be off-beat and weird with a Torment successor. Both did so. The setting-grogs hating on Numenera come across to me as pedantic as the people who like Forgotten Realms better than Eora. I don't think they represent a majority.